Radio Days Europe 2016

France. Paris. It’s been a while since I was there. I’m pretty sure I ordered a steak in a restaurant using my poor excuse for French which loosely translated to: “My name is Rump Steak.”

Perhaps during this visit to France I’ll make a better impression?

Radio Days Europe 2016. I’ll be there, my first in my new role as Creative Director at IMGR. I’m looking forward to catching some of the sessions on offer – all of which look to cover a range fascinating ideas – and nerd out about Radio Imaging with people.

The last time I attended Radio Days Europe, I had just started at Capital as Head of Production. Myself and a Dutch Imaging brainiac Ivo Samplonius gave a talk on our different perspectives of Radio Imaging. Ivo, about Jingles. Me? Anti-Jingles… well, it was more about building sonic branding utilising the music in the playlist… Regardless, it was a super useful session – if only for me!

My attitudes to Radio Imaging have matured since 2012, as have I. No longer do I blow the trumpet to sound the death of anything ‘old.’ There’s more to it than that. It’s not about killing off the old ideas, it’s about figuring out why they’re old and in what context in order to better deploy their usage elsewhere.

What worked as a Sweeper, might now work better as a bit of content on Social Media. What about Vice-a-versa? Maybe that Morning Show Promo highlighting the funny content your listener missed that morning would be better built as a forward sell – while moving the ‘content the listener missed on the show’ into a Podcast/Soundcloud/Youtube/AudioBoom clip? We have so many more avenues to communicate with the listeners – Radio Imaging isn’t just about the stuff between the songs, it’s about your station’s Image everywhere.

Isn’t that exciting? All the things we can do, all the immediacy we can use to connect the messages. The ways we can use language! O.M.G. The engagement we can measure. It’s this measurement that could prove an interesting feature as we move forward. The digital guys have been onto it for ages. I wonder if tracking the ROI on what we can do digitally from a Radio Imaging perspective translates directly into how the station really rates? (I know I’m not the first person to have thought about this. I’d love to know of anyone’s experiences).

And what about creativity? There are plenty of great ways to write in order to communicate effectively with the audience. “It’s not copy, it’s just conversation” says CEO of Thinx, Miki Agrawal. It’s worth remembering that even tough products have clever (also simple) ways of talking about themselves in ways that engage. Radio can do that even better, surely?

Radio Imaging is changing, and there are many facets to what we do that need to be discussed, recycled, remixed, retooled and rebooted – I can’t think of a better place to talk about the concepts behind this process than a think-tank like Radio Days Europe 2016.

I’ll be there doing that, come say hi and geek out with me. I’ll be the guy trying hard not to call himself “Rump Steak.”

Note: No French was harmed in the writing of this post. Merci beaucoup.

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